The worst G73JH's Owner

May, 2010. I'm a proud owner of a G73. I have everything I was looking for: the performance, the quality, the silence.

September, 2010. I still have all the above except the time for it. The time that would allow me to take full advantage of every cent I spent. Basically, college and internship obligations forced me to "underrate" my G73 and use it as a common laptop. And common isn't exactly it's purpose.

December, 2010. The G73's screen is giving signs that death is near. One week later, I get a PSOD (which I didn't know the name until now). At the time, in order to figure whether it was the VGA Card or the LCD Screen, I plugged the laptop to a external monitor and the image was crystal clear, which led me to the conclusion that the LCD cable could be the problem. 99% of you are now guessing I did the obviously thing. Well, I didn't. Since I was still able to work on it and perform my college/internship needs, I didn't RMA it within the next few months.

August, 2011. College is over. Time to finally RMA the G73. Two weeks later, it returns home with a replaced Motherboard, Video Card, LCD Screen and ODD (the old one had noise issues). All I had time for was to power it on and confirm that everything was fully working, since I went on holidays the next day.

September, 2011. The vacations are over and the G73 is still packed in a corner. Like any normal person, I should have unpacked it the moment I got back home, right? Well, I guess I'm not that normal. It took months. Several.

January, 2012. I'm the worst owner of a G73. More than an year after the PSOD, I finally decided to unpack it (and call myself an idiot in the process). Sure, I've been working 9-10 hours a day since I started working in last September. Sure, a relationship also consumes time, especially the free one. But still. It's just wrong to abandon a G73 all those months (six, to be more precise), the way you abandon a 10 year old desktop computer. Believe me, I feel ashamed.

To redeem myself, I bought a Cleaning Kit and offered my JH a equally top notch treatment, since it came from RMA with a few stains which I hadn't clean yet.

Meanwhile, it has been sitting on the desk since Sunday, since I'd like to ask/get feedback from you on some issues before I actually bring it back to life:

1. It hasn't been 2 years yet since I bought this laptop and two other models have already been released (JW and SW). My question is: should I have waited and bought any of the later? Is the JH already considered old or inferior in comparison?

2. Regarding the previous question, I'd like to know if is it worth and reasonable to invest on an SSD, even though the HM55 doesn't support SATA III? If yes, which one(s) would you suggest?

3. Is the 5870 still capable of running the latest games on maximum settings? In comparison to the Nvidia's card present on the SW, is there a notable difference?

4. Are there any specs that I should miss on the JH model? (e.g. 3D, USB 3.0, EAX 5.0, etc)

Not that I'm giving up on my JH, but I can't ignore the fact that in a few months this model went from high-end to "outdated" if compared to the following models.

Well, that's all. Hopefully, at least one person will get here.


Thanks in advance

 

1. Retrospectively it would have been a good idea to at least wait for the G73SW, but what difference does this answer make?
Oh, and there's also the G74SX, so 3 models actually.

2. not an expert on this subject

3. Definitely not all. Battlefield 3, for example.

4. I really love 3D, I'd count that in. USB3.0 is useful with an external HDD. EAX 5.0 is still not supported, only 4.0, but that is not very relevant nowadays, since most games use OpenAL.

Also, note that people have successfully upgraded their G73JHs with a 6970m/6990m.

 

It is always true that if you wait a year the next model will be out and it will be much better than the one you have now. This would be an endless lament. If you are trying to stay on the cutting edge of laptop technology so that you can play games on max settings then you will rarely get two years out of the model you purchase. Laptops start out handicapped because the mobile versions of high performance hardware cannot be as fast as their desktop counterparts. That means you have to stay right on the bleeding edge of technology just to keep up with the midrange of high performance desktop cards.

I've had mine for over two years now and I'm currently shopping and making decisions myself. I don't think that SSDs are quite where they should be in the $$$ per gigabyte category yet. In my opinion, they are still too expensive and too small. I just shopped for them today and a 256GB is nearly $400. Some are even more and 256GB is roughly half of what I consider acceptable per drive. I think I'm going with 750GB hybrid drives personally.

I'm thinking 3D is in for my next laptop. USB 3.0 is also a given but they all have that. The sandy bridge processors will be a nice performance boost compared to our first gen i7 chips. This was my first laptop with a backlit keyboard and every future laptop I buy will have it. I'm a lot more sensitive to the quality of the laptop keyboard after enduring this poor one for so long. I'm still not over that first year of laggy keyboarding with missed keystrokes. To be fair, Asus stayed after the problem doggedly and it is 99% gone with the right drivers and BIOS.

If you are looking for max settings on currently released games, you probably need a new laptop. I'm still playing current releases on this laptop but I do have to tweak graphics options here and there to get them to run well. I feel that it's time to move on to a more powerful machine myself. I'm not sure if it will be an Asus this time. I had to RMA this one twice and the touchpad is still kind of crappy as is the keyboard. The current models may be wonderful, though. I don't see a lot of G74 owners raising a ruckus like we did when this G73 came out.

 

G73sw also has none of the infamous bugs that plagued the G73jh. Asus got it right with it.

 

First of all, I'd like to thank you for the replies so far.

Altough G74SX is a new model, it's also part of a new G series, reason why I didn't count it.

Couldn't agree more. But at the time I was blinded by the hype, or as Jody said, the ruckus around the G73, which, I admit, didn't allow me to think as straight as I should have. Being the first model, the bugs were inevitable and that's what I've failed to foresee.

On the bottom line, I'm still happy with the JH and although it ain't a cutting edge laptop anymore, I will keep it for another year or two before I think about a new one. Besides, I can always upgrade the GPU later.

Meanwhile, after some research, I bought an Intel 320 Series SSD (128GB) to enhance the performance and my own experience. The reviews and the famous reliability, convinced me. Since I'm not buying a SATA III capable computer anytime soon, there wouldn't be any future gains in buying an SSD capable of it.

Since I'm a newbie on the SSD matter, I'd like to know if is there any guide(s) I could follow in order to get it right and tweak it the best way possible.

Also, I never got to upgrade my vBios. So, before I do it, which ones are available and what are the differences between them?


Thanks for your time once more.

 

I'm still truckin along with my G73JH. I have one from the first shipment in February '10 (ones from Newegg), and haven't had a single problem, not even the PSOD/GSOD that many people complained about. Everything has held up fine, I am on it daily for several hours and it's holding up very well. All I've done is a repaste, and next week I'll be adding in my first SSD (128gb Plextor M3). I think it needs a good thorough dust cleaning, but other than that this has definitely been my easiest to maintain and best performing machine.

I am tempted to buy a new laptop, but my wife is due an upgrade this year, so I'll have to hold out until 2013. I'm trying to talk her into letting me hand down this G73 so I can pick up the new G75. I'm such a good husband.

 

The SSD Optimization Guide - The SSD Review
AFA VBIOS see this thread, I use OD2 mentioned there - It will allow you to OC the GPU, and gives up to 2.5 hour battery life
http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus-gaming-notebook-forum/634168-g73jh-vbios-93v.html

 

I've had both the SW and the JH and my gaming performance (5870 vs 460) has defiantly been better with the 5870. I would say your lappy is still great for today's games. BF3 is the exception because almost everybody has to adjust settings to get ideal frames.

 

After going through 9 laptops in 5 years I can say that the G73JH has been my favorite. I'm a proud owner and have invested enough money in upgrades to keep this for over a year now. I don't play many games, but the JH has been able to handle everything I've thrown at it. Don't expect to run Battlefield 3 at highest settings with 60FPS, but it runs well enough at Ultra settings at 1920x1080 resolution with Anti Aliasing deferred and post at the lowest. If you're up to the task and don't mind the costs then you can try the GPU upgrade to a HD 6970M which has been successfully performed by a couple of JH owners on here. For the primary hard-drive I would suggest a 128GB Crucial M4 SSD. It's a SATA-III drive at 6Gb/s, but due to JH's limited SATA-II interface it'll run at half the speeds. Seems to perform better than my previous 128GB GSkill Falcon SSD anyway. For a secondary HDD I went with a 750GB WD at 7200rpm, because I didn't trust the stock Seagate HDD's. However, my best investment has been the Intel Ultimate-N 6300 wireless card. I use the wireless for everything, so if you're not wired then it's definitely worth the upgrade.

 

Thanks everyone for the feedback so far.

The VBios has been successfully updated and I have gathered all the information I was looking for. Tomorrow I'll be installing a clean copy of Windows and as soon as everything is set, I will run CDM on my SSD and post the results. That way I can get some feedback from you and make sure it's all good.

 

Almost done here.

Just a last question before I run the CDM: should the IRST be installed or is it optional? Are there any benefits?

Thank you.

 

RST is not mandatory, but it I have the latest installed http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?ProductID=2101&DwnldID=20624&lang=eng&iid=dc_rss
Also the toolbox is very useful - http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=18455
It eliminates the need to do firmware updates from CD, they can be started from windows with this tool.
if you want to get max performance out of the SSD see this thread http://forum.notebookreview.com/sol...et-can-not-take-full-advantage-fast-ssds.html

 

Done.

Btw, is the Intel RAID and AHCI with GUI driver needed for anything?

A must have. It was actually the first thing I installed. I didn't even have to manually disable defrag schedule or Superfetch, since it can be done with a single click.

 

Neez do you mean this http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?lang=eng&DwnldID=20110#help
IF you do, When I recently installed RST 10.8.0.1003, the Intel Raid and AHCI with GUI .. was removed automatically so the answer is no; is it not needed.

 

Exactly.

Btw, what's your DPIM status on Intel ToolBox? Mine's stating that current storage driver does not support DPIM settings.

EDIT:

Uninstalling the Intel RST fixed the above. I guess I'll be better without it.

 

Mine says feature is optimized -- no action required. I did not do anything to change this setting.
if you look at device manager- IDE ATA/ATAPI Contr. - Intel 5 series.. - Driver - Driver Details- IAstor.sys should be the driver

 

I have reinstalled the Intel RST (latest) and confirmed the "IAstor.sys" driver, but the DIPM setting is back to "Current storage driver does not support DIPM settings".

I'll check over Intel's community boards.